Wednesday, June 20, 2012

We have to leave tomorrow, so this is our last full day. Since the rain from yesterday is still falling, we make breakfast under the tarp and decide to just stay in camp for a while, instead of the usual morning fishing. We are both actually a bit let down when the rain finally lets up shortly after noon, since that makes it only 23 hours of continuous rain instead of an even 24. We decide to hit the western end of the lake today because the outfitter and this website had said that the channel between the large island and the mainland was a likely spot for smallmouth and northerns. The wind today is truly obnoxious; although not terribly strong, it seems as if no matter which direction we are facing that is the direction the wind is coming from. There are a couple of occasions where when we change directions to go back to a spot or follow a shoreline, the wind literally changes within minutes so that it is once again in our face. What the ?#^$$@^?? But the channel does produce a couple of decent fish for us, we actually had these two fish on at the same time!

Although my northern was pretty small, it was exciting to catch because he made two strikes at my spinner and missed each time, then came back and got it on his third try. Then when he got close to the canoe my rod tip snapped off; I really thought I had something there for a minute! I was kind of surprised when this little fellow finally came out of the water.
While we are here at the lake's western end, we check out the campsite that is high up on a ridge. Although a bit of an uphill climb, it does allow a nice view of the channel and the lake beyond. Apparently aware that we are on land, the wind stops completely and the lake turns to glass. Yet another tiny smallmouth head-butts my lure!
Unfortunately the time when we each had a decent fish on does not signal the begining of a feeding frenzy, but was instead an isolated coincidence. After that it is back to the 6" smallmouths that this lake seems to have an endless supply of. We fish our way along the northern shore of this arm of the lake as we head back to camp, but neither of us hooks into anything else interesting. We head back to our wet camp and have our final fish dinner of the trip. At least this afternoon was mostly rain free. But except for the 5 minutes of excitement in the channel, this day was pretty much a bust as far as fishing was concerned. Actually that could pretty much be said of the trip as a whole.